Woke up this morning and the knee that started acting funny on Sunday was still flaring up. At 8:45 I called the doctors’ office with whom I’m registered. Unlike my doctor’s office at home, the conversation with the receptionist was pleasant and productive. She booked me in with a physiotherapist for 10:30. All the G.P.s’ offices in Kirkwall seem to be located in the hospital. I pulled into the hospital parking lot at 10:25, parked for free in the patients’ parking area, walked into the hospital, and was taken at exactly 10:30. The last time anything happened that swiftly for me back home was 28 years ago this week when I found, had diagnosed, and had removed a cancerous tumour – for which I thank Dr Sheppard, OHIP, & Credit Valley Hospital greatly. But back to Orkney. The first words out of his mouth were, “This is a 20 minute consultation.” Which may be why they were running on time, or may just be to stave off chatty patients. Either way, I was in, examined, and out in 16 minutes, and did not feel rushed at all. I don’t know if my experience was typical of the U.K. or was island-specific, but I don’t care – I was most impressed. (No, we still don’t know what the prob is with the knee – it didn’t act up once while I was with the therapist – isn’t that always the way?)
On another note: vacuum cleaners. Remember when vacuum cleaners had bags? And then Mr Dyson or someone came along and said, “No more messy bags; we have canisters!” Well, yuck. For the last 25 years I’ve been waiting for the pendulum to swing back and the industry to re-introduce bags, saying, “No more digging around in canisters, we have nice clean bags!” I don’t care what anyone says, when it was a bag, yes, clamping the new one in took an extra 3 seconds, but the full bag came out of the machine in a nice, contained, easily disposed of sack. Now, after pulling the canister out, I hold it over the garbage can, pop the opening, and watch as a fine layer of dust flies up from the waste that pours out of the canister and settles throughout the recently cleaned room. Then, with the particular cordless stick model I have now, I have to reach in and scrape out any of the clumps of debris that are caught right up against the filter. NO, this way isn’t better, dammit.
But, this week, mine broke. Well, the roller brush stopped spinning. I carefully removed & cleaned it, and tried it again – to no avail. I took it to the shop where I bought it, but customer service isn’t their strong suit, and they basically told me, “yes we’ll take it back and get it fixed, but you might as well phone Hoover first and see if they can help you. ” Lovely.
So I wrote Hoover, who replied promptly. But their solution was that they wanted to send me a new roller brush. But isn’t that like telling the mechanic that your wheels aren’t turning, and having him say, “let’s put on new tires!”. I tried explaining to the person at the help desk that the problem might be more complex than replacing a pop-in, pop-out unit, but he seemed confused. So in spite of fearing that I may be putting the vacuum out of warranty, I got out the screw driver, lifted off the base, saw that a spindle was clogged, cleaned it, replaced the base, and voila! it sucks! (you know what I mean).
All in all, not quite the day I had anticipated.